‘I warned the Igbos that Jonathan government will fall’

Chief Chris Ngige, the Minister of Labour and Productivity,has said that he warned the Igbos that Jonathan government will fall saying that the South-east zone was marginalised because the Igbo ‘made a bad investment because they invested in the Jonathan presidency’ in the 2015 presidential election.Ex President Jonathan

Chief Chris Ngige made this known while speaking with THISDAY in an exclusive interview in Abuja.

He said “ I’m a politician. But before these things happened, before the government of Jonathan failed, I went to all the Igbo fora to tell them that the Jonathan government will fall.

“I went to our Eze Ndi-Igbo in Enugu twice. They could not even reply to a letter written by Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, seeking for a meeting with them,”

“They refused to listen to me, and to make matter worse, there was no voting in most of the areas in the South-east; they just allocated 5 per cent to APC.

“It was that bad, it is too late to cry when the head is off. Politics is business in a way, you invest in business and you reap profit.

Ngige lamented that Igbo play bad politics as they even invested in Jonathan’s presidency more than the people from the South-south.

‘But all I want to tell you is that we played bad politics; we made a bad investment because they invested in the Jonathan presidency. They invested in Jonathan more than the South-south, where he hails from.

“I am not saying that is enough to marginalise them or not allow them come in but we are there. I will continue to speak for them and when there is anything to be distributed, we will make sure that the South-east gets its own portion. But they will not get excess portion.”

“Even in a family where the head of the family goes to the farm to harvest his yams those who accompany the farmer to the farm get more share.

“When they bring back the yams some of them will be damaged, and the pieces are put out in one section. Then the whole yams are put into the barn and some will be sent to the market for sale. And some will be sent to the family centrally for distribution among the family units.

“Those ones that are in pieces, the extras, will be shared among those that went to the farm.
“We did not benefit from the extras with people who went to the farm. We didn’t go to the farm in the south-east.”

Speaking on the All Progressives Congress (APC) campaign meove for the 2019 election Nigige said “Oh my God, so you are in the group of those who are pessimistic, who have refused to see the wonders of this government?

“Well, I’m from the South-east, so when we get there we will show them that first and foremost we have fought corruption to a standstill and that people can no longer steal at will, much less keeping such monies at home.

“The movement was from the bank to the house, but now that homes have been raided, maybe they will go to the farm to keep them. But people cannot steal money because there is no hiding place anymore. They cannot steal primitively like it was done before. The poor people of Nigerian are happy about this,”

“If anything, I feel happy every day when I wake up, and as I pray to my God, I asked him to enable me to take important decisions with him guarding me.

“If not for this government, the government of Muhammadu Buhari, government of change, Nigeria would have been worse than Venezuela.

“The crisis you have in Venezuela today, the demonstrations in Venezuela, are as a result of the collapse of the whole economic firmament of that country. Venezuela, like Nigeria, did not plan for the rainy day.”